The old man and Bult didn't leave Mana's side for a second the very next morning. The big day when Mana would take on the Ascension Gauntlet was here. Truth be told, the magician wasn't totally sure about if she was ready, one thing that the girl knew for sure was that she did all she could do during that last week. If that week didn't get her ready and able to take on the challenge, the time it'd take to get Mana ready wouldn't have been acceptable. It was, quite literally, do or die, despite Mana being under no particular pressure to fight that day.
"Who's fighting today?" Mana asked quickly devouring the greasy and disgusting camel stomach dish that the locals ate as an energizer. It smelled of digested grass and was quite greasy and sticky – just the kind of food Mana despised but the girl had not eaten for a while and she'd need all the energy she could've gotten.
"Another Battle Royale between those captives from the ruined settlement. A big one this time, I think the goal is to emulate a small battle. There'll be at least couple of hundreds of them out there," Bult informed Mana and the old man.
"How many people are permitted to win such battles?" Mana wondered just wanting to know.
"Well, it depends, if it's an everyone for themselves kind of brawl then only one, if it's a team bout, probably the last team standing but if they're equally inexperienced expect only a couple of people to be left standing. Good news is it'll take the whole day to finish that butchery, that's why the fighters love events like that. The Sheikh wants to filter the warriors from the chaff and he's almost done rotating all the settlers through the grinds of battle." The old man replied this time, he looked Mana in the eyes and, from his eyes, the girl knew that the old man realized what she'd say.
"Well then, I have no choice but to fight. It's either that or letting hundreds of people die," Mana closed her eyes and stomached down the putrid mess of meat that she had to stuff down her throat.
"Say, girlie... Ya think you could... You know... Maybe get your chakra back? That one time you said that during your trip you managed to use it once," the old man brought up. Maybe his idea wasn't that bad, maybe trying to reawaken Mana's lost ability to use chakra properly would've been a much more fruitful training regimen but truth be told Mana had not the slightest idea as to how to remove the mental blocks that her body placed on it.
"It's... It's too risky, I need surefire ways to win, not faith. Lately, I've been thinking that even my own body couldn't be trusted..." Mana's eyes squinted a little bit in sadness. "I mean there's nothing I wish more than to be able to use chakra, to be what I always was – a ninja magician, neither one is able to fully outweigh the other, I am both. Why would my own body keep a part of my own identity locked away like that?" the girl wondered out loud.
"Well... I've never seen any human move quite like you're able to right now. I'd say we've both made a fighting monster out of you. There's one last thing that troubles me though..." The old man also shared Mana's trend of thinking out loud.
Mana and Bult looked at the old man curiously to which he leaned forward and explained.
"The Sheikh is an amazing fighting ability expert. He's surveyed decades of amazing martial artists doing what they do, he may not have seen through your hacks before but after he sees you move now... There's no mistaking it, he'll see through it. He'll know that your moves are a style designed to win any gamble, a defensive style that is more of a cheat than a legit martial art," the old man revealed the root of his worries. Mana smiled.
"Well, in that case, I'll hold myself back, only reveal my abilities at the very last second and by the time I am outed it'll be too late" Mana replied carelessly.
Bult stuffed the rest of the camel stomach that he held in his hand.
"But didn't you say you wished to show the Sheikh the best fight of his life? If the final moments are you revealing you've cheated by breaking the laws of motion and honorable martial art traditions..." Bult raised a point that actually made Mana concerned. Loud booms and yells came from the side of the arena. The girl leaped up from the bench and rushed to the arena winking for the two fighters sitting at the breakfast table.
"I'll think of something..." She pushed the problem away to a more convenient moment, or at least she did so in their eyes, internally she was still feeling like she was being burned alive by those observations that the two of her only friends in this place made.
"Now, ladies and gentlemen! Prepare to witness a true gift from the Sheikh, the one, and only amazing fighting event, unlike anything you've seen before! Five hundred settlers entered the arena last weekend, men, women and children, all lost their homes to a desert raider rogue warlord. Now today, ladies and gentlemen, we shall relive that glorious battle that left these people homeless! See as all the three hundred remaining living settlers face off against twenty-five trained warriors of the arena, in a reenactment of the worst day in their lives!" The announcer was yelling from the top of his lungs, slobbering all over himself and his head was shaking so vibrantly from all of the shouting that his ruby earrings were shaking and jingling on his ears from the vibration and head shaking.
Three hundred people were let into the arena, rounded up around the center. Most of these men had already tasted battle, not many women and children survived the initial trial by blood and fire of the Sun Disc arena. At this point more than half of women and children that survived the disaster and were unfortunate enough to be tested in combat throughout the last week were dead. Most of the settlers were now ravaged and scarred settlers, not in any way experienced, ruined was a more fitting word. To someone, it'd have seemed a very uneven match up to round up about three hundred men, few surviving women and children and have them fight twenty-five people. To Mana it seemed like a slaughterfest, the Sheikh must've seen no worth in any of these men and the others as fighters so he wanted to get rid of them, slaughter them in front of the audience making a very good end of the weekend.
A black shadow lingered on the window of the waiting building, Mana leaped off of the window and dived right onto the platform transporting the fighters that were supposed to surround and slaughter the settlers. Every single fighter standing on that platform shook in their boots and stepped back, surprised by the appearance of Mana whom none of them saw coming.
Mana scratched her aching foot, the jump almost made her twist her leg, it definitely tested her abilities. Had she gotten injured now it may have been all over but luckily to the young genin it seemed she'd actually be able to fight after all. Finally, the platform closed in letting the twenty-five trained warriors and Mana gather around the settlers that clutched together grabbing hold of each other, children and women wept, some of them have killed some of their own last week so they couldn't have really been blamed.
"Young woman!" The announcer yelled, "You have no business here! Why did you appear here today?! Do you also wish to partake in this reenactment?! If so, then perhaps the mighty Sheikh shall grant you permission!?"
Mana glared angrily at the Sheikh's balcony up high, the man was on his feet and standing on the edge, good. He was already intrigued.
"There will be no reenactment, I wish to participate in the Ascension Gauntlet." Mana declared out loud. The public stood quietly. Usually, such brave declarations would've meant the death of the partaking one, for that reason no one took part in the Gauntlet. Some of them wished to see these lowly untrained people getting slaughtered and now they may be forced to see something that initially appeared much less refined.
"How dare you!? Interfere with yet another battle, will you!? What shall the Sheikh say!?" The announcer angrily yelled at Mana, the girl heard feet grinding against the stone and noticed the trained fighters trying to surround her, attributing her more and more to the cattle they were supposed to slay there that day with their bare hands.
"Whosoever kills this hatchling and tears her head off her shoulders with their bare hands shall be granted entry into the Agbarmahal. No one has the right to do as they please in this arena but the Sheikh, this girl clearly has a death wish" A feminine voice spoke from the Sheikh's quarters, a woman speaking for the Sheikh himself, maybe the old man had not the strength left in his lungs in his old age to yell loud enough to be heard?
The announcer roared and leaped on the announcer's platform that was moved further from the arena, Mana felt the crowd thinning and forming a circle around her. This was bad, she had to earn the right to even face the three champions of the previous events in a row, she'd be worn out even before the actual Gauntlet would take place...
As the announcer declared the beginning of this pitiful event a large crowd rushed at Mana, men mostly, women and children cowered behind the large crowd of men, both the trained arena fighters and the settlers, hoping that they'd do the dirty deed for them. It'd certainly be a dark and dirty deed, there were no spikes below the arena, only grass. Mana's head would have had to come off without any aid from external sources which wasn't that easy to do, not for a normal human anyways.
The ex-kunoichi took a breath or two, right before the storm of punches and kicks tried to hit her – slightly less than three hundred men and a couple of braver women and older children trying to kill her. Each of them pushed each other away, stepped over each other in a mad symphony of sadism and hatred, wish to kill someone else to survive themselves, not only survive – live in the Sheikh's palace in luxury and honor.
Not a single punch, kick, scratch or any other sort of harm landed on Mana. The girl's dodging and redirection, her nimbleness and acrobatics were so on point that she purposefully let the people trample each other, push each other down without laying a single finger on any of them. Within twenty minutes of doing nothing but dodging and gentle redirection, Mana emerged from a pile of beaten and broken bodies. All of them were breathing but powerless to go on.
The magician looked at the cowering twenty or so women and little children, then back at the Sheikh. The moment one of them tried anything funny she'd smell their sweat, she'd hear their footsteps. She'd already beaten all of them and it felt so easy. Almost like dancing in the grasslands in the Sun, just like she used to do as a little girl, except this time it wasn't the grass to caress her thighs and her knees gently, it was kicks, fists, and fingernails trying to claw the very flesh of her limbs, unsuccessfully, fortunately...
"If we're done here I'll follow up with my challenge then?" Mana shouted out, her voice was a little winded but with a little clever space management and control of the storm of people rushing at her, she managed to efficiently control this insane situation as good as possible. These trained martial artists didn't feel much different to her, truth be told the simple villager was much more difficult to read, the better the martial artist the easier they were for Mana to blow away.
"What guts, what nerve!" The announcer yelled out, the public was still absolutely silent, refusing to believe what they just didn't get the chance to see. All they saw was a messy stampede of fighters who barely even fit in the arena trying to trample and murder a little girl but only managing to tear up her already ragged shirt a bit. The mess of all the fists, feet and bodies was too confusing to follow, it was unlikely that any of them even saw how little Mana had to do to beat all of them, had she actually played with all of her cards she'd have beaten every single one of them much faster, maybe even in less than five minutes...
"Each one of them is alive, are you not worried that they'll attack you while you have your back turned?" The same feminine voice reached Mana from the Sheikh's quarters.
"They know already they stand no chance. There's no use in it. If you feel like getting me off the arena, please, by all means, send everyone out here and I'll beat everyone you throw at me but I will get my challenge and what you'll get in that case is a mangled roster and no one left to entertain your audience tomorrow. I have reached the level of fighting ability where quantity has little importance, you need a more skilled opponent, not more of them." Mana yelled out getting the public riled up. The audience was completely hyped and on the girl's side. Maybe it was her guts that entertained them, after all, no one previously interrupted an event like this and this young woman did it twice during her quite short stay in the arena.
The Sheikh's elderly figure appeared from behind the thin silk curtain together with a strangely similarly aged woman. Mana would've assumed that the man who had it all would've wished a younger and more attractive company, this woman appeared to be dressed more as a mercenary and looked a bit too frail to be an eye candy. Who could she have been? The Sheikh whispered something into the woman's ear and she spoke again, without a doubt it was the same voice that spoke for the Sheikh before.
"What do you wish from all of this?" The question reached Mana.
"Just to fight in the Ascension Gauntlet. If I win I get to leave and send a message with your hawks, hopefully, the tracking kind, do you have any Blood Hawks?" Mana explained adding a question at the end, her throat was getting a bit irritated from all the long-distance communication.
"The Sheikh has everything he wishes to have, Blood Hawks do live and breed in the desert so they have a place in the Sheikh's aviary. Do you realize that if you win the Ascension Gauntlet you can live in eternal glory for the rest of your days in the Agbarmahal?" The woman's voice inquired.
"I don't care about that, if I win I'll just send my message and be on my way, hopefully, my fights will also help Sheikh-sama make some realizations of his past mistakes as well..." Mana respectfully bowed when referring to the Sheikh. The old noble lifted his arm gesturing for the injured and crippled beaten fighters to be quickly moved off the arena. The platforms once again connected the arena with the living quarters as the guards and the medical staff, little that remained of them, did their best to vacate the arena.
"Very well, you have ruined my event, however, girl. Make sure that you make up for that ruined event," the Sheikh's own voice finally spoke directly to her. Mana nodded her head in a manner similar to bowing again.
"That is very much my intention," she replied.
For a moment the magician stood there, observing as the arena was being vacated and prepared for the Ascension Gauntlet. Finally when all the injured and those unwilling to fight were lead out of the arena and the place was prepared the announcer began the declaration.
"Ladies and gentlemen, in an unexpected turn of events... It appears that today we won't be seeing the glorious three hundred on twenty-five battle but instead an Ascension Gauntlet of this strange young woman who joined the roster just a week ago. Does this young woman know the real meaning of her actions? Does she know that in the Ascension Gauntlet it's all kill-or-be-killed? That remains to be seen! However right now our staff is quickly looking for champions of recent events for this brave soul to face, one thing is for sure – the third challenger will be Damij, the man who has soundly beaten this young woman in the past!"
After the man finished speaking the public just cheered. Mana closed her eyes and took a deep breath trying to calm down her bumping young heart. Her body was still stressed from the sudden need of evading three hundred people trying to kill her. Had she only used all that she could in that twenty-minute long brawl she'd have tired much less, perhaps the first fight would be a bit easier and provide her with a chance to get a breather during it? That much remained to be seen... All this cheering and noise. It reminded Mana of home, of the stage where she performed her magic tricks from, even that small cardboard box where she began her "career"...
"Finally!" The announcer joined the cheers himself as the platform extended to the other side of the arena. "You may cheer for this young woman but this next challenger is similarly a survivor of a Battle Royale, the last year's "Great Ninja World War Reenactment"! You shall be reminded that this lady did not get a single scratch on her after an all-out war where she had to play the dishonorable princess that started the war and everyone wished to kill. She was the Woman that Changed History – Apheiya!"
"A woman?" The magician opened her eyes in surprise to see her next challenger. The girl had never thought that this place would have another distinguished female warrior seeing how women had such a reputation for being useless in terms of warfare around this place. It'd be a great honor seeing this woman with such a strange title. Someone who defied all odds and when cast in the role that was supposed to be murdered horribly not only survived but beat all the enemies without a single scratch deserved such a name...
"The Woman that Changed History..." Mana mumbled to herself waiting for her next challenger to appear.
